Methods of Sex and Gender Analysis

Sex and gender can influence all stages of research or development processes, from strategic considerations for establishing priorities and building theory to more routine tasks of formulating questions, designing methodologies, and interpreting data. Many pitfalls can be avoided—and new ideas or opportunities identified—by designing sex and gender analysis into research from the start. Sex and gender analysis work alongside other methodologies in a field to provide yet further "controls" (or filters for bias) providing critical rigor in science, medicine, and engineering research, policy, and practice.

This section presents state-of-the-art methods of sex and gender analysis. As with any set of methods, new ones will be fashioned and others discarded as circumstances change. The value of their implementation depends on the creativity of the research team. There is no recipe that can simply be plugged into research or development processes. Researchers will want to consider all methods and think creatively about how these methods can enhance their own research. Methods are applied in Case Studies.